Dolemite - Rudy Ray Moore! I am a bit confused about the character. Is he a kung fu master, private detective, or professional comic roaster?

Mr. Motion - He does very little, but what a cool nickname.

Hurricane Annie - Performer who was once Dolemite's girlfriend and GOOD GRIEF WOULD YOU LOOK AT THOSE!

Queen Bee - Ample owner of a nightclub. Her idea of fashionable dress makes her look like a mummer.

Bo - Ernie Hudson! A member of Dolemite's trusted circle and expert at Iron Head kung fu.

Doug and Jimmy - Two more of Dolemite's friends. Jimmy dies saving his mentor's life.

Mr. Cavaletti - Greedy nightclub owner with ties to the mob. Testicles chewed off by hungry rats. (Long story, see the movie.)

Sheriff Beatty - Racist and vile, this individual will stop at nothing to kill Dolemite.

The Plot:

Rudy Ray Moore and his movies are an uneven experience for me and this film is no exception. The first half of the movie is a roller coaster ride of crazy action, random events, and things that make you go, "What?" It also drops the N-bomb enough times that I took offense to it. Part of that can be attributed to my associating it with my grandmother on my mother's side. Hard working woman, raised three children and helped with numerous grandchildren, but she held on to views that were plainly unjust. Even as a little boy, less than ten, I knew that what she said about certain other people was wrong. Perhaps the reason that the older generations need to pass on is to make room for new ones that will avoid the same mistakes. Anyway, another reason it caught my attention was that dropping the N-bomb became ubiquitous. If, say, Sheriff Beatty was the only one screeching it, then I could attribute that to the writers defining his character. Having everyone use it just seems like lazy writing. I have a similar problem with the dialog in the remake of "Teenage Caveman."

My exploration of that tangent is complete. You can come out now.

Two rednecks are driving along when they spot a group of people partying outside of a large house. Because the revelers are African-American, the rednecks call the sheriff. He gathers several weapon-carrying deputies that help him bust down the door. From what I can tell, the mansion is owned by someone at the party, so Sheriff Beatty is already skating on thin ice. The party was not rowdy; in fact, the only mischievous person there is Dolemite. He is in a back bedroom fornicating with a redneck trollop, who just happens to be the sheriff's wife. When the deranged lawman discovers the pair, he orders a deputy to shoot his cheating woman. The situation quickly degenerates, because Dolemite draws a pistol and shoots the deputy before fleeing outside.

The movie has a tendency to inflict something upon me that I try to avoid: naked man ass. This happens a number of times. To make matters worse, Dolemite tumbles down a steep, ivy-covered hill before reaching his car. The director (and wardrobe department) were kind enough to garb Rudy Ray Moore in a flesh-colored thong for his momentous leap off the hill. Unfortunately, it seems to have been ripped off during the roll down. In other words, not only have I been exposed to several shots of Rudy Ray Moore's meaty tush, but also a money shot of Rudy Ray Moore, Jr. (yeah, that) flopping around. For the love of fig leaves, why?

Refusing to give up, the sheriff and his men pursue Dolemite's getaway car with their own vehicles. The chase ends at Bronson Caverns, unusually shown to be the small tunnel that it really is, as the protagonists lay an ambush for their pursuers. A short burst of gunfire causes a huge fireball that signals the end of the chase.

We catch up with Dolemite again in Los Angeles, where he is performing a stand-up routine in a crowded club. Mostly, this involves picking out people in the audience and insulting them in some manner. "Which color-blind grandmother gave you that dress? Look at how ugly that man is; why, I bet even his own mother wouldn't kiss him. You are so fat that your wife is not worried about whether you are in, but if she can breathe with you on." The abusive monologue continues for several minutes and many viewers will notice that Dolemite's suit changes a few times. What is impossible to miss is the dancer who begins to shake her stuff as the acerbic comedy winds down. She is showing a lot of skin and jiggling it all over the place. In fact, I could hardly believe that flesh would move like that; the girl must have been made of jello or pudding.

The point of the entire preceding paragraph is: I have no idea what this means, but the people who made the movie wanted me to see it.

The club that Dolemite performed his act in is owned by Queen Bee. Her business is booming and causing no small amount of grief for Mr. Cavaletti, who had opened a club shortly before Queen Bee. Normally, this would not be a problem, but Cavaletti borrowed a lot of the money to open the club and his creditors are mobsters. Unless he finds a way to start making a profit, both he and his nymphomaniac mistress are going for a swim. This is probably why you never see someone begging the mafia for money to start a cement company - doing so is just asking for trouble.

Several of Cavaletti's toughs visit Queen Bee's after closing and wreck the place. The worms also beat up the matronly owner and kidnap two of the girls: Java and TJ (though, technically, Java is not a girl). The frightened pair is taken to a place that looks like the Munsters' house. When the crooks take them inside, you realize that it is the Munsters' mansion. For the next thirty minutes of the movie, Java and TJ are stripped to their underwear and felt up by the bad guys. Not pleasant, though it sure beats being raped or wearing cement booties in the bay.

In addition to closing her club down, Queen Bee must go to work at the mob-backed venue. By doing this, she ensures that Java and TJ will continue to breathe air, vice saltwater. Queen Bee packs up so fast that nobody else knows what happened to her. Dolemite, being the savvy sort of comedian/groovy dude that only existed in the 70's, discovers the sudden closure and starts asking around. He finally finds someone who can assist him when he looks up Hurricane Annie. Not only does she help locate Queen Bee, she also mounds on some sweet pillowy loving. Yes, we are again treated to Rudy Ray Moore's bare moon, but it is eclipsed by Annie's chest. Let it never be said that breasts are without practical aesthetics.

Trouble also followed our hero to Los Angeles, because Sheriff Beatty shows up at the local police precinct. He is still looking for Dolemite and convinces the Captain to put his best detective on the case. (It goes without saying that the redneck lawman misrepresents what happened. He tells the Captain that Dolemite killed his wife.) As fate would have it, Detective Blakely's main focus has been busting Cavaletti. You see the convergence too, don't you?

The only way to get Queen Bee off the hook and nullify Cavaletti's trump card is to rescue Java and TJ. To do that, Dolemite seduces the nightclub owner's mistress; the hanky-panky culminates in a sex scene that makes the house fall apart. I mean literally - a large chunk of the ceiling crashes onto the bed. The whole thing looks like an exorcism gone horribly wrong. Following the ground shaking tryst, the exhausted nymphomaniac gasps out the address where the girls are being held captive. Dolemite sneaks on over there and kung fu's his way through the guards.

Wishing to repay the bad guys with interest, Dolemite and Queen Bee plan a surprise for Cavaletti's big party. An extended fight occurs at the swank mansion. (Boy, that place looks familiar. Bet it has an ivy-covered hill on one side, too.) To be honest, though I do enjoy crazy kung fu antics, like reversing the film for a few moments and having all sorts of mayhem, the rumble lasted too long. I was happy when Dolemite split with Beatty on his tail, because it meant the punches, kicks, and intentionally bad dubbing were over.

The movie definitely faltered somewhere around the middle. After that, there are still a number of events that make you pause the film so that you can collect yourself, but these do not come fast and furious like they did in the beginning. One aspect of the movie that never truly stopped was the afros. How had I forgotten about that specific eccentricity of the late 60's and 70's? Several were so large that I wondered if they had a problem with the boom mike getting stuck in them. All of the hairdos fall short of what I remember as "The Great Afro of '78."

I will explain. I am a good ten years younger than my sister, Dawn. When I was a young lad, one of the games that my friends and I came up with was to get Dawn's high school yearbooks from where they sat on a shelf in the basement. We would look through them for the largest afro that we could find. I found The One. In the picture you could see the student's face, neck, collar (of course the collar), and afro. That was it; the background was completely obscured by his hair. It must have been three feet in diameter. Imagine several nine year-olds howling in laughter over this huge afro and even bookmarking the page so that we could try to find a larger ball of hair. Sure it was a stupid reason to laugh, but we also used to play a game that involved pushing each other into a holly tree. Kids are like that.

What? The answer is no. We never found one that was bigger. It was the afro to end all afros.

Detective: "You mean you're assigning me to help some honky sheriff solve a murder case which we know nothing about? And for two years I've tried to nail Joe Cavaletti and finally I get this a**hole by his balls and you want to assign somebody else to the case?"

This is a small part of the movie's finale; Dolemite and Queen Bee's friends help them get even with Cavaletti's wicked gang. Bo shows off his "Iron Head" style, then spanks a naughty girl who hit him with a vase.

I understand Rudy Ray just passed away. Sad. I met him twice, and he was kinda quiet in his later years, but obviously proud of himself. As he should be. He certainly never got the kind of appreciation he deserved for such audacious crazy bad movies, and for being the forefather of both Rap, and urban comedy.I have a feeling his star will rise more as time goes on, and somewhere up there, Red Foxx and he are telling us we ought to "Put your WEIGHT ON IT!!!!!" Ha ha ha!

Sadly, the UNCUT version of The Human Tornado is no longer widely available. A good 10-15 minutes was cut from the original and scenes were reordered. Among other things, a whole sequence featuring Dolemite and his boys carjacking and kidnapping a swishy gay man has been completely removed. I feel the uncut version is the definitive version.

This film is somewhat a sequel to the original Dolemite movie, and it very clearly reflects a lighter tone than many of the more serious black films of the era. It almost plays like an extended episode of Dukes of Hazzard, or some other late 70s-early 80s TV show that needed only a laugh track to make its humor and action complete.

Definitely with you on the 'manass' problem, and the exercise equipment over the bed has confounded me since I first saw this as a kid.

Perhaps the best line of the whole film is "b***h are you for real?" The same question I would ask anyone who seeks to make 100% logical sense out of this film, or decry its value as a unique combination of Black comedy, film history, and something unique to its era. It's fun, wild, and crazy enough to keep you laughing through repeated viewings.